[Chart-topping calypso singer who supported US civil rights
movement and African initiatives dies of congestive heart failure]
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HARRY BELAFONTE, SINGER, ACTOR AND TIRELESS ACTIVIST, DIES AGED 96  
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Ben Beaumont-Thomas
April 25, 2023
The Guardian
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_ Chart-topping calypso singer who supported US civil rights movement
and African initiatives dies of congestive heart failure _

‘Rebel spirit’ … Harry Belafonte in 2011. , John
MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images

 

 
Harry Belafonte [[link removed]],
the singer, actor and civil rights activist who broke down racial
barriers, has died aged 96.

As well as performing global hits such as Day-O (The Banana Boat
Song), winning a Tony award for acting and appearing in numerous
feature films, Belafonte spent his life fighting for a variety of
causes. He bankrolled numerous 1960s initiatives to bring civil rights
to Black Americans; campaigned against poverty, apartheid and Aids in
Africa; and supported leftwing political figures such as Cuba’s
Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

The cause of death was congestive heart failure, his spokesman told
the New York Times
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Figures including the rapper Ice Cube
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Farrow [[link removed]] paid
tribute to Belafonte. The US news anchor Christiane Amanpour tweeted
[[link removed]] that he
“inspired generations around the whole world in the struggle for
non-violent resistance justice and change. We need his example now
more than ever.”
Bernice King, daughter of Dr Martin Luther King, shared a picture of
Belafonte at her father’s funeral and said that he
[[link removed]] “showed
up for my family in very compassionate ways. In fact, he paid for the
babysitter for me and my siblings.” The Beninese-French musician
Angélique Kidjo
[[link removed]] called
Belafonte “the brightest star in every sense of that word. Your
passion, love, knowledge and respect for Africa was unlimited.”

Belafonte was born in 1927 in working-class Harlem, New York, and
spent eight years of his childhood in his impoverished parents’
native Jamaica. He returned to New York for high school but struggled
with dyslexia and dropped out in his early teens. He took odd jobs
working in markets and the city’s garment district, and then signed
up to the US navy aged 17 in March 1944, working as a munitions loader
at a base in New Jersey.

After the war ended, he worked as a janitor’s assistant, but aspired
to become an actor after watching plays at New York’s American Negro
Theatre (along with fellow aspiring actor Sidney Poitier
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classes – where his classmates included Marlon Brando
[[link removed]] and Walter Matthau
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– paid for by singing folk, pop and jazz numbers at New York club
gigs, where he was backed by groups whose members included Miles Davis
[[link removed]] and Charlie Parker.

He released his debut album in 1954, a collection of traditional folk
songs. His second album, Belafonte, was the first No 1 in the new US
Billboard album chart in March 1956, but its success was outdone by
his third album the following year, Calypso, featuring songs from his
Jamaican heritage. It brought the feelgood calypso style to many
Americans for the first time, and became the first album to sell more
than a million copies in the US.

The lead track was Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), a signature song for
Belafonte – it spent 18 weeks in the UK singles chart, including
three weeks at No 2. His version of Mary’s Boy Child was a UK
chart-topper later that year, while Island in the Sun reached No 3. He
released 30 studio albums, plus collaborative albums with Nana
Mouskouri, Lena Horne and Miriam Makeba. The latter release won him
one of his two Grammy awards; he was later awarded a lifetime
achievement Grammy and the Academy’s president’s merit award.

Bob Dylan’s first recording – playing harmonica – was on
Belafonte’s 1962 album, Midnight Special. The previous year,
Belafonte had been hired by Frank Sinatra to perform at John F
Kennedy’s presidential inauguration.

[A lifetime of activism … Belafonte with Martin Luther King Jr.]
A lifetime of activism … Belafonte with Martin Luther King Jr.
Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Belafonte maintained an acting career alongside music, winning a Tony
award in 1954 for his appearance in the musical revue show, John
Murray Anderson’s Almanac, and appearing in several films, most
notably as one of the leads in Island in the Sun, along with James
Mason, Joan Fontaine and Joan Collins, with whom he had an affair. He
was twice paired with Dorothy Dandridge, in Carmen Jones and Bright
Road, but he turned down a third film, an adaptation of Porgy and
Bess, which he found “racially demeaning”.

He later said the decision “helped fuel the rebel spirit” that was
brewing in him, a spirit he parlayed into a lifetime of activism,
using his newfound wealth to fund various initiatives. He was mentored
by Martin Luther King Jr and Paul Robeson, and bailed King out of a
Birmingham, Alabama, jail in 1963 as well as co-organising the march
on Washington that culminated in King’s “I have a dream” speech.
He also funded the Freedom Riders and SNCC, activists fighting
unlawful segregation in the American south, and worked on voter
registration drives.

He later focused on a series of African initiatives. He organised the
all-star charity record We Are the World, raising more than $63m for
famine relief, and his 1988 album, Paradise in Gazankulu, protested
against apartheid in South Africa. He was appointed a Unicef goodwill
ambassador in 1987, and later campaigned to eradicate Aids from
Africa.

After recovering from prostate cancer in 1996, he advocated for
awareness of the disease.

He was a fierce proponent of leftwing politics, criticising hawkish US
foreign policy, campaigning against nuclear armament, and meeting with
both Castro and Chavez. At the meeting with Chavez, in 2006, he
described US president George W Bush as “the greatest terrorist in
the world”. He also characterised Bush’s Black secretaries of
state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as being like slaves who
worked in their master’s house rather than in the fields, criticisms
that Powell and Rice rejected.

He was a frequent critic of Democrats, particularly Barack Obama, over
issues including Guantanamo Bay detentions and the fight against
rightwing extremism. He criticised Jay-Z and Beyoncé in 2012 for
having “turned their back on social responsibility … Give me Bruce
Springsteen, and now you’re talking. I really think he is Black.”
Jay-Z responded: “You’re this civil rights activist and you just
bigged up the white guy against me in the white media … that was
just the wrong way to go about it.”

He continued to take occasional acting roles. In 2018, he appeared in
the Spike Lee movie BlacKkKlansman. In 2014, 12 Years a Slave director
Steve McQueen [[link removed]]
announced he was working with Belafonte on a film about Paul Robeson,
though it wasn’t developed.

Belafonte was married three times, first to Marguerite Byrd, from 1948
to 1957, with whom he had two daughters, activist Adrienne and actor
Shari. He had two further children with his second wife, Julie
Robinson: actor Gina and music producer David. He and Robinson
divorced after 47 years, and in 2008 he married Pamela Frank, who
survives him.

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Original article in The Guardian also features videos of Belafonte.
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* Harry Belafonte; US Civil Rights Movement;
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